


Bang Bang

by Chinchillaatthedisc0



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: I'm not sorry, M/M, Oops, bang bang - Freeform, gross over use of nancy sinatra lyrics, semi-happy ending???
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-02
Updated: 2016-06-02
Packaged: 2018-07-11 18:17:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7064905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chinchillaatthedisc0/pseuds/Chinchillaatthedisc0
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once, Charles Xavier fell in love. That was his first mistake.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bang Bang

Once, Charles fell in love. That was his first mistake.

Lying in the sand, legs numb, spine aching, and Charles is still begging for him. He'd do anything for Erik, even after this--after everything.

When Erik comes back, far too late, and everything goes tits up--well, Charles shouldn't, but he forgives Erik. Of course he does. That's his second mistake.

*

"I love you," Charles tells the skin stretched over Erik's shoulder, bodies pressed together at night, post-coital. There is no afterglow. Just the space between them (or lack thereof) where everything is broken.

Erik tenses. "No," he says, "You don't."

Charles pulls away, rolling over to face the wall. He hears what Erik's not saying, the quiet you can't love me please don't love me i can't lose you too and he wants to pull Erik closer but somehow he thinks that will just end up pushing him further away, and, well. Charles can't lose Erik again, either.

*

Charles thought once, naively, that love was all that mattered. He knows now how wrong he was and he wheels himself into the kitchen to face the stony silence Erik has left behind again, gone God knows where with God knows who.

When he leaves like this, Charles doesn't know if he'll ever see him again. Sometimes, he thinks it would be better if he didn't.

*

He searches every corner of Cerebrus and cannot find the man he's looking for. He's not sure that man exists anymore, anyways.

*

Erik comes back to him like the ocean to the shore in the middle of a storm and it is not pretty, it is not easy, it is fighting and angry and fierce and in the shipwrecked aftermath Charles tongues at his split lip and eyes the faint bruises across the gently falling curvature of Erik's chest and he aches for something he does not think he will ever have again.

But when he slides his arm around Erik's waist, Erik doesn't push him away. He doesn't pull him closer, either.

(It is not everything, but it is a start.)

*

Once, Erik tells him about them, about Magda and Nina.

"I loved them," he says, voice rough. Charles presses his face into the space between Erik's shoulder blades, breath warm over the already hot skin.

"I'm sorry," Charles says. He does not say I love you. Erik does not think it.

*

Raven's mouth is a bloody crescent across her lips and she is not smiling.

"This isn't healthy," she says to Charles. "You need to let him go."

He laughs and he laughs and he laughs because he knows he can never let Erik go.

He tried before, once. And like a moth to a flame he was drawn right back and burned himself again but the burn was so good. It hurt in all the right ways.

"I love him," he says to Raven. He thinks the word love has become synonymous with need and he thinks if he stopped breathing he could survive for Erik at his side but if Erik died, Charles would go with him.

"No," Raven says, "you don't."

*

"What did Raven want?" Erik says, voice tight like he already knows.

Charles stares at him from across the room. "She wants me to leave with her." She wants to take me away from you.

"You should go," Erik says, gruff. He does not look at Charles. He blows cigarette smoke out the open window and thinks, I cannot keep living like this.

Charles leaves the room. He wonders what the alternative is. If there is one. If it means that Erik must not keep living. And if Erik doesn't, then neither will Charles.

*

On the beach, Charles thought the biggest mistake he would ever make would be loving Erik Lehnsherr.

He was wrong, of course. The biggest mistake he will ever make is loving Erik Lehnsherr twice.

*

"I think I loved him into staying," Charles admits to Hank one night, floaty and distant from the drugs and the alcohol. He tries to focus on the other man and finds that he can't, and it's funny to him. He laughs. "I think I can love him into living, too."

Hank's voice is contemplative in a way it only is when he's high, spacey and thoughtful. "Is it really living if he's doing it for you?"

Charles doesn't have an answer for that. He takes another hit and laughs through the smoke.

*

There's not a goddamn thing in the world that could make Erik do anything for anyone.

Charles finds the note before he finds the missing luggage.

I can't is all it says, and Charles understands, because he can't, either.

*

Cerebrus finds Erik at the edges of the earth and Charles listens to him, listens to it's my fault and they were children and he could have been everything.

He hears, I love you, too.

Then Erik is gone.

*

Erik's death is felt like a physical blow is Charles' stomach. He throws up in the bathroom and Hank calls Raven and she comes to him and tugs him into her chest and she whispers to him but all Charles can here is those last four words before Erik was gone forever.

He throws up again and he knows it's bad when Raven doesn't complain that some of it got in her hair. He knows it's bad when she does not let go.

*

"I loved him, too, you know," Raven says later, fingers wrapped around the ceramic mug, pale face bare of makeup, cheeks blotchy from crying. "He was mine, too."

He was something different to Raven from what he was to Charles. They both know it and it is unspoken.

She says, "You can't monopolize his memory. You can't destroy yourself over losing him. We all lost him."

Hank puts a hand on her shoulder and the door bursts open.

Peter is standing there, wild eyed and messy haired. "Can I see him?"

Charles looks to Hank. "I called him," the beast says, and then, "We don't have the body."

Peter's gaze is fierce. "Then how do we know he's dead?"

*

The last place Charles heard him was in a grimy bar at the ends of the earth. When Charles goes looking, he is not there. Local authorities have not found his body. They say they do not even know his face.

Charles goes home empty. It is worse to know that Erik loved him but would not stay than it is to think that Erik loved him but could not stay.

*

He hears on the news once of the man controlling metal in South America. He goes, but it is not Erik.

He hears a similar rumor of a man in Prague, but it is not Erik.

He ignores the rumors in Poland. They are never Erik.

No matter how much he wants them to be.

*

Time passes. Charles heals.

Loving Erik may have been a mistake both times but they were the best mistakes Charles has ever made.

*

Once, Charles thinks, if he had died on the beach, it would be easier. For everyone.

Bang bang, he thinks. My baby shot me down. 

His spine throbs with sense memory. The barrel of the gun was staring him in the face and all he could think about was how beautiful the man pulling the trigger was.

*

His memories are fuzzy. Maybe it didn't happen like that.

Maybe it was an accident.

*

For all that Charles has loved Erik, he does not think he has ever forgiven him.

He forgives now. Before it's too late.

*

Charles wakes in the night and he is old and he is frail and there are warm hands around one of his, wrinkled and unfamiliar, and those lines on that face are unrecognizable but he knows those eyes.

"Erik," he rasps, and he is shushed.

"Raven found me," Erik says, kissing the back of Charles' hand. "She asked me to see you."

"You left," Charles coughs. Erik closes his eyes.

"I couldn't stay."

I loved you, Charles wants to say. I loved you, wasn't that enough?

He still loves him. He knows now that you cannot love someone into staying.

"I love you," Erik says, mouth against Charles' forehead, tears wet against his cheeks as he speaks.

They are the last words Charles ever hears, the last words spoken between two lovers.

They are not enough to keep Charles there.

You cannot love someone into staying.

**Author's Note:**

> DISCLAIMER: This is not actually Chinchillaatthedisc0. Just her favorite person in the whole world. She asked me for a cherik, and this is what she got, and since I don't have an ao3 account anymore, she let me borrow hers to post it. Apparently she's working on her other cherik so look forward to that? 
> 
> I am not even the slightest bit sorry. Title from Bang Bang by Nancy Sinatra, which is the ultimate cherik song. Also the line "bang bang, my baby shot me down" is from that song. 
> 
> This was so fun to write. Unbetaed. Sorry not sorry.


End file.
